Pages

Tuesday, 17 September 2013

MY CORAM CUP by Penny Dolan

Ever since the National
Theatre’s poignant production of“Coram
Boy”, based on Jamila Gavin’s novel for young people, I’ve longed to visit the
Foundling Museum. Living in Yorkshire, my trips to London are usually filled
with precious family events so it wasn’t until this summer, as part of a short
burst of house-sitting, I was able to make the visit.

Just me, myself.

Paul Theroux, talking
about travel writing recently, said writers should always travel alone, except
for their notebook. Although my expedition was not a great one, I recognised
what he meant.

Well, what a remarkable
August day it became! Having mislaid my pocket-sized A to Z ( a well-worn
palimpsest of post-it notes and scribbled addresses)
I had to decipher the poorly shown street names on my phone, in the dull light
of a drizzly morning.

I stared around
than usual. I strolled through several garden squares, nicely replanted to
reveal their original 18th Century designs and worried the work would be undone by austerity cuts. I enjoyed the Georgian architecture of the district more keenly than
during visits when I’ve been wracked by publisher-meeting nerves.

Then just before noon, I
bumbled in through the Foundling Museum’s door, all that's left from what was once the Foundling Hospital.

I was immediately greeted and
ticketed by a keen young thing. However, she also thrust a large round disc
bearing the number 5 into my palm.

Er, why?She repeated her explanation twice.

Then her words connected
with an item I’d partly glimpsed a day or two before on the Foundling Museum website:
EXCHANGE.

I had become “one of the ten randomly selected participants who can
take home a piece of this constantly changing artwork today.” I had become involved with the work of the conceptual
artist, Clare Twomey.

Clare had been invited by The Foundling Museum to create a piece of
art inspired by the Museum. The Foundling Hospital, begun by Thomas Coram, used art to attract wealthy sponsors and it was this collection that began the Royal
Academy. Clare's interest, as I understand it, was in the human interactions within the story.

The intention was to provide a
home for babies and children whose mothers were unable to care for them. There were only a limited number of places, and after
the mother had been interviewed, the selected child was handed over and that
was that.

Mother. Child. Two things that should go together were separated.

From thoughts like those, Clare devised EXCHANGE,and this is how it worked for me.

Outside the "gallery", like the mothers before
the Board, I was told that I only had one chance. I was shown into a large
basement room where 1,550 apparently identical white cups and saucers were
arranged across five large tables. On the date of my visit, some were no longer pairs. just saucers.

Mother. Child. Cup. Saucer.

My task was to go round the
room, choose one cup only, pick it up and read the good deed, printed within a
blue or pink design, on the bottom. If I agreed to do the deed – interpreted in
some way to suit my situation - then I could take the cup away with me. If not,
I had to replace the cup in the saucer and walk away, like those mothers had to
walk away.

No second chance. No other option. What’s decided is decided.

I went around, reading all the
now-empty saucers, their words identical to the promised deed on their missing
cup. Then I studied the apparently identical pairs, rather as the wealthy sponsors might do, surveying the rows of identically
uniformed foundling children or the list of petitions..

Afterwards – I was going
to write “after the ceremony” because that is how it felt – all the
participants who had chosen a cup queued up. We had our number and deed
recorded in a log book. Unlike the Foundling Hospital children, whose names
were changed on entry, we were able to write our own names and thoughts.

A few extra visitors had
arrived, like tardy mothers. They stood around hopefully, asking if they could
be part of the project.

“Not
today”, they were told, as others had been in the past.

Not selected. No second
chance for you, my dear.

Meanwhile,
my blue printed cup was swaddled tightly in paper and placed in a discreet
brown paper bag. I brought my cup back home, eventually, to Yorkshire as a reminder to do my good deed when I could.

In case you are
interested, my task was to “Use one day of annual holiday to volunteer for a
charity.” Being self-employed and without fixed holidays, this task takes some re-thinking. What I take the "deed"
to mean is “Go out and do something practical to help people for a day rather
than just noodling, daydreaming or writing about it.” Suggestions welcome.

EXCHANGE as an event, closed on the 15th of September, but if you’d like to find out
about EXCHANGE, or join in with the project by doing a good Coram deed yourself
– sadly, without any cup as inspiration – you can find out about it by click this EXCHANGE or the one above. And if you haven't visited the Foundling Museum, do go!

Penny Dolan.

ps. As my children’s
novel, A Boy Called M.O.U.S.E (Bloomsbury) included a homeless child needing
shelter, the entire unplanned experience on a wandering sort of day felt highly serendipitous!

pps. Apologies!

I've may have given this post a misleadingly alliterative title (MY CORAM CUP) because EXCHANGE was set up and curated by THE FOUNDLING MUSEUM

The CORAM FOUNDATION (now known
as CORAM), which is a children’s charity, is not directly involved with arranging the curatorial programme
at The Foundling Museum.

6 comments:

What a strange an interesting experience! The Foundling Hospital is on my to-visit list too. I remember reading about an exhibition of the pieces of cloth mothers were allowed to leave for their children...? Not sure if it was a temporary or permanent exhibition.

Search the History Girls

The History Girls

The History Girls are a group of best-selling, award-winning writers of historical fiction and non-fiction. Some of us write for young adults, some for fully fledged adults, some for younger readers.

Among us, we cover every period from the Stone Age to World War II. Geographically, our novels will take you from Trondheim to Troy, and the Caribbean to the Wild West, via Venice, Victorian England and Ancient Rome.

Individual, entertaining, sometimes provocative: on this daily blog we'll share our thoughts on writing, research, reviews, and all aspects of our work. We love what we do and we want to talk about it. We hope you'll want to join in!

If you want a History Girl to appear at an event or write an article or review, please contact her via her website (links are all goven on the About Us page)

Owing to an overwhelming amount of Spam, we have had to disable Anonymous Comments. Please do comment but you'll have to Follow us first.

Just scroll down in this right-hand column to under Followers and click Join this Site. Thanks.